I see a couple of threads with people having issues after this latest round of updates, but I didn't see anyone having the issue I am.

I just updated my LMDE Mate system, everything reported to update/install successfully. After I updated I noticed that my system had been up and running for 130 days, so I figured why not reboot it. Now I get the login screen, but after I enter my username and password I just get a black screen with the mouse cursor.

I did ctrl-alt-f1 , and ran apt-get to see if there were any more updates and there were not.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get Mate running correctly again?

~~~~~~ Excuses are the only thing that get in the way of solutions ~~~~~~

I'm experiencing the same thing. Updated Mint (3 times actually, this seemed weird) and everything seemed to go well. Then I wanted to open a terminal using a shortcut, but that gave back an error, saying mate-terminal didn't exist. Alt+F2 run command didn't work either, so I figured I'd reboot my system. Shutdown command in the laucher did nothing, and Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing either. I rebooted by going to Ctrl+Alt+F1, and typing 'reboot', and after that when I log in to Mate, I get a black screen and a cursor. Cinnamon works fine, but after logging in to Cinnamon Mate is gone.

I noticed afterwards in 'sudo apt-get upgrade' that a lot of mate-* stuff was being held back.

Also I just tried upgrade again just now, and a whole lot of stuff is popping up. About 914 packages will be upgraded. I haven't upgraded it yet, as to I'm not sure what will happen.

(who was moaning about a sudden download of libmate stuff (and which reminds me of a sudden download of a bunch of "mono" libraries)) then no, i have no cinnamon nor meta-cinnamon installed. i've no idea what dependency triggered a sudden download of mate matters.

Well.... the X server just crashed and won't start back up. Judging by the amount of hard drive activity I think it is still trying to install the updates. I guess I'll let it sit for awhile and see if the hard drive settles down. Then I'll reboot and see what happens.

~~~~~~ Excuses are the only thing that get in the way of solutions ~~~~~~

Ok, so all hard drive activity stopped. So I rebooted the system, it failed to start X on the reboot. I pressed ctrl-alt-f1 and logged in as root. I ran "dpkg --configure -a" and found that it continued on with the install of the updates. At some point tried to start the X session, I tried to log in only to find that Mate still didn't work. I again pressed ctrl-alt-f1 which took me back to the session that was still installing and configuring updates. Once it finished I ran "apt-get upgrade" and "apt-get update" to make sure there were no more updates then rebooted.

After the reboot X started fine, but Mate was still not available in the list of session options. Cinnamon is still working fine.

~~~~~~ Excuses are the only thing that get in the way of solutions ~~~~~~

I installed all 1300-something updates (I suppose this is UP5?), successfully. I had no errors, so this was just good. However, after install I still didn't have MATE. So I went to Synaptic and installed mate-desktop-environment (along with its dependencies) as per instructions in http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download, and now MATE shows up as one of the available desktop environment.

1- most of the issues here, i believe, are from trying to install incomplete updates: UP5 was just released, the servers are under heavy load, if you notice that it's unstable to finish the upgrade please don't do it, wait a couple days, we waited several months for this UP so a few more days to preserve your systems is more than fair

2- the update method: why not use mintupdate? you have there access to a lot of info that eventually is relevant to you; if you want/desire to use the cli please update with dist-upgrade otherwise you won't get UP5 and might get a broken system

Make sure you follow the post upgrade instructions to get MATE or Cinnamon working:

Update Pack 5

2012.09.17Questions asked during the upgrade

Always choose "keep file" (as opposed to "install new version").When asked where to set up Grub, make sure to choose your current grub location (for most people that's /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2)New metapackages

Cinnamon theme and backgroundMake sure you install mint-meta-debian-cinnamon after the upgrade to properly set the default theme for CinnamonIf your background is black, simply right-click on the desktop and set the background again.

zerozero wrote:1- most of the issues here, i believe, are from trying to install incomplete updates: UP5 was just released, the servers are under heavy load, if you notice that it's unstable to finish the upgrade please don't do it, wait a couple days, we waited several months for this UP so a few more days to preserve your systems is more than fair

2- the update method: why not use mintupdate? you have there access to a lot of info that eventually is relevant to you; if you want/desire to use the cli please update with dist-upgrade otherwise you won't get UP5 and might get a broken system

I must've hit a low spot. It took me 15 minutes to download, so I didn't feel much. I'm guessing "mintupdate" is the Update Manager, which is what I used.

melbo wrote:Make sure you follow the post upgrade instructions to get MATE or Cinnamon working:

Update Pack 5

2012.09.17Questions asked during the upgrade

Always choose "keep file" (as opposed to "install new version").When asked where to set up Grub, make sure to choose your current grub location (for most people that's /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2)New metapackages

The updates seemed to do nothing other than change som documentation errors, so I just installed the newer versions. Nothing has happened yet though. I also installed mate-desktop-environment (as according to http://mate-desktop.org) is there a difference in this and mint-meta-debian-mate?

rbnielsen wrote:I must've hit a low spot. It took me 15 minutes to download, so I didn't feel much. I'm guessing "mintupdate" is the Update Manager, which is what I used.

yes, but here

rbnielsen wrote:Hm, odd.. I think it might have something to do with UP5, with some updates being released to early. Updates depending on others that aren't updated. And thus b0rking it.. I dunno.. :/

it looks like you couldn't download all the package information due to server overload, UP5 is a whole and doesn't have missing dep unless you couldn't fetch all the packages from the server.

rbnielsen wrote:The updates seemed to do nothing other than change som documentation errors, so I just installed the newer versions. Nothing has happened yet though. I also installed mate-desktop-environment (as according to http://mate-desktop.org) is there a difference in this and mint-meta-debian-mate?